Today the British mole (Talpa europaea) population has reached record numbers.

In a countryside where so many mammal species are declining that has to be good news. Or is it?

Many gardeners like my old mate John have a love-hate relationship with this tiny subterranean velveteen-covered animal.

John is a wildlife fan. He volunteers at his local nature reserve. He loves all living creatures.

His garden is an oasis of biodiversity. John has filled it with trees, bat and bird boxes, a pond, rough areas and special insect and bee-friendly plantings.

All are there to encourage all sorts of wildlife.

Then the family of moles moved in. Their many molehills sprang up across the lawn like black pyramids. What to do?

Suddenly, and surprisingly, John got just as interested in molecatchers as in the moles.

He has discovered the profession has a long and fascinating history.

The Romans used earthenware pots filled with water as traps – we know this because we still find their mole traps in Roman digs.

The clay pot method lasted until medieval times when traps got more sophisticated.

Clay traps were fragile, liable to break in poor weather or under a horse’s hoof. Molecatchers turned to wooden traps, home carved or made by local wheelwrights.

Early molecatchers often moved from farm to farm to ply their deadly trade. They got food and lodgings and were paid for each mole they caught.

Moleskins could also be sold for extra money. Plumbers used them for wiping molten lead joints and moleskin trousers and waistcoats were popular hardwearing clothing.

At the height of the moleskin trade four million English moleskins each year were exported to the US.

Molecatching was a lucrative business – a good catcher’s income was more than a teacher’s.

The skins were so valuable that poachers would steal traps for the dead moles inside.

Molecatching as a rural skill was very much a family business. Skills, tricks and tips were passed from father to son. Molecatchers were very often distinctive local characters, tramping the rural estates in their moleskin waistcoats. They were celebrated in song and story.

It took over a hundred moleskins to make a waistcoat, so these were the best advert a good catcher could wear.

Much to the disappointment of a starling couple, which would have liked to nest there as well.

There are still icy patches on the footpaths.

At the hide, the water in the lake is still frozen. One of us speaks about seeing a bittern in the reed beds, but it may be wishful thinking. Others think they hear cranes. Wishful thinking as well? Is the sound really geese?

Another starling couple. This time with a nest hole which is unambiguously theirs.

The male spreads his wings and sings.

A bit further, two marsh tits. A blue tit.

The next lake is mostly frozen as well. A lone coot swims in the open water part.

Three Canada geese flying over head. They land in one of few ice-free lakes, south of the path to the sea. A female common pochard.

Many thanks to The Girl of the really interesting literary blog The ReporterandTheGirl for nominating me for the Versatile Blogger Award!

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3. State 7 things about yourself.
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Incomes Flat in Recovery, but Not for the 1%

WASHINGTON — Incomes rose more than 11 percent for the top 1 percent of earners during the economic recovery, but not at all for everybody else, according to new data.

The numbers, produced by Emmanuel Saez, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, show overall income growing by just 1.7 percent over the period. But there was a wide gap between the top 1 percent, whose earnings rose by 11.2 percent, and the other 99 percent, whose earnings declined by 0.4 percent.

Mr. Saez, a winner of the John Bates Clark Medal, an economic laurel considered second only to the Nobel, concluded that “the Great Recession has only depressed top income shares temporarily and will not undo any of the dramatic increase in top income shares that has taken place since the 1970s.”

The disparity between top earners and everybody else can be attributed, in part, to differences in how the two groups make their money. The wealthy have benefited from a four-year boom in the stock market, while high rates of unemployment have continued to hold down the income of wage earners.

“We have in the middle basically three decades of problems compounded by high unemployment,” said Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-of-center research group in Washington. “That high unemployment we know depresses wage growth throughout the wage scale, but more so for the bottom than the middle and the middle than the top.”

In his analysis, Mr. Saez said he saw no reason that the trend would reverse for 2012, which has not yet been analyzed. For that year, the “top 1 percent income will likely surge, due to booming stock prices, as well as retiming of income to avoid the higher 2013 top tax rates,” Mr. Saez wrote, referring to income tax increases for the wealthy that were passed by Congress in January. The incomes of the other “99 percent will likely grow much more modestly,” he said.

Excluding earnings from investment gains, the top 10 percent of earners took 46.5 percent of all income in 2011, the highest proportion since 1917, Mr. Saez said, citing a large body of work on earnings distribution over the last century that he has produced with the economist Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics.

Concern for the declining wages of working Americans and persistent high levels of inequality featured heavily in President Obama’s State of the Union address this week. He proposed raising the federal minimum wage to $9 from $7.25 as one way to ameliorate the trend, a proposal that might lift the earnings of 15 million low-income workers by the end of 2015.

“Let’s declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full time should have to live in poverty,” Mr. Obama said in his address to Congress.

Mr. Obama’s economic advisers say that he has been animated by the country’s yawning levels of inequality, and the administration has put forward several proposals to address the gap. Those include higher taxes on a small group of the wealthiest families and an expansion of aid to lower- and middle-income families through programs like the Affordable Care Act.

The data analyzed by Mr. Piketty and Mr. Saez shows that income inequality — as measured by the proportion of income taken by the top 1 percent of earners — reached a modern high just before the recession hit in 2009. The financial crisis and its aftermath hit wealthy families hard. But since then, their earnings have snapped back, if not to their 2007 peak.

That is not true for average working families. After accounting for inflation, median family income has declined over the last two years. In 2011, it stagnated for the poorest and dropped for those in the middle of the income distribution, census data show. Median household income, which was $50,054 in 2011, is about 9 percent lower than it was in 1999, after accounting for inflation.

Measures of inequality differ depending on whether they are measured after or before taxes, and whether or not they include government transfers like Social Security payments, food stamps and other credits.

In an interview, Mr. Burkhauser said his numbers measured “how are the resources that person has to live on changing over time,” whereas Mr. Piketty and Mr. Saez’s numbers measure “how are different people being rewarded in the marketplace.”

“That’s a fair question to ask, but it’s a very different question to ask than, ‘What resources do Americans have?’ ” Mr. Burkhauser said. Notably, many of the Obama administration’s progressive policies have been aimed at blunting the effects of income inequality, rather than tackling income inequality itself.

Mr. Saez has advocated much more aggressive policies aimed at income inequality. “Falls in income concentration due to economic downturns are temporary unless drastic regulation and tax policy changes are implemented,” Mr. Saez said in his analysis.

The recent policy changes, including tax increases and financial regulatory reform, he wrote, “are not negligible but they are modest relative to the policy changes that took place coming out of the Great Depression. Therefore, it seems unlikely that U.S. income concentration will fall much in the coming years.”

February 2013. Work to improve habitat and protect declining woodland birds is about to take place at two Worcestershire nature reserves.

Funded largely by a Woodland Improvement Grant, Worcestershire Wildlife Trust is about to undertake thinning and ride widening works in two woodlands. Trench Wood (near Sale Green) and Monkwood (near Grimley) have both been the focus of previous forestry work and wildlife gains have been recorded.

James Hitchcock, conservation officer for the Trust, explained “The work we’re undertaking is part of the long-term restoration of both these woodlands. Visitors to the woodlands have become used to work of this sort over the last few years. The areas we’re working in and the type of work we’re doing this year, however, are very much focused on trying to halt the decline of woodland birds like spotted flycatcher, marsh tit and lesser spotted woodpecker.”

As we have lost woodlands and our traditional woodland management methods have faded, numbers of woodland birds have declined. Once common, birds like the marsh tit and spotted flycatcher now have red status – severe decline in numbers and whose population is globally threatened.

While there are a number of factors contributing to this decline, re-instating coppicing in woodlands can help. Coppicing involves cutting down trees almost to their base – the trees spring back to life with strong new growth, which can be cut again on a constant cycle. By managing on rotation, woodland managers can ensure there is always a range of habitat for wildlife.

Thinning trees also ensures there is a broken tree canopy, which means more light reaches the ground and allows a variety of woodland plants and wildflowers, such as bluebells and wood anemones, to thrive.

The Trust will also be widening some of the rides that run through the two woodlands. As with coppicing, this promotes the growth of wildflowers – from primroses to common vetch. An astonishing 90% of a woodlands’ biodiversity can be found along woodland rides and edges.

James continued “As with the decline in farmland birds, the drastic plummeting of woodland bird numbers is worrying. But it’s not all bad news. We’ve been working on improving both these woodlands for several years and last year we recorded the return of spotted flycatcher in Trench Wood. This shows that what we’re doing is working – we just need to do more of it.

Butterflies

“While we’re hoping the work will help these three birds in particular, there are many more that will benefit from the work – garden warbler, blackcap, willow warbler and woodcock, for example. And it’s not just birds – butterflies and other invertebrates will benefit too. Some of the work may look a bit drastic to the eye but it really is necessary for the long-term benefit of wildlife in these two beautiful woodlands.

“Along with encouraging visitors to keep dogs on leads and not straying from the paths, this work really gives us a great opportunity to give these birds and all our wildlife a real helping hand.”

Both Trench Wood and Monkwood were once owned by the LG Harris Brush Company. They were both purchased by the Trust, with help from Butterfly Conservation, in the 1980s primarily because of their importance for insects.

LG Harris actively managed both woodlands to produce timber for brush handles. In so doing they planted many non-native trees but their management techniques created favourable wildlife habitats and, although the methods of management were markedly different, the woodlands retained much of their ancient character.

James added “Much of the maintenance of the woods is done by our volunteer groups. Volunteers across the county are vital to our work and I’d encourage anyone who’s interested to get in touch – it’s a way of finding out more about managing for wildlife as well as a great opportunity to get outdoors and get healthy.

“Not only will the work directly benefit the woodland and the wildlife but any profits made from the sale of the timber will be ploughed directly back into more conservation work on our nature reserves.”

Work is expected to begin on 25th February and will last for approximately two weeks. The Trust is advising all visitors to Trench Wood and Monkwood to heed any notices on site and follow diversions where necessary.

May 2013. With the imminent release of the draft Environmental Statement for the London to Birmingham phase of HS2, the Woodland Trust sets out its expectations for the document: here.